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SUNDAY MORNING SONGS:ENGLISH LANGUAGE GÄTHÄS INAMERICAN SHINSHÜ TEMPLESScott A. MITCHELLGraduate Theological Union, Berkeley, CaliforniaIntroductionAs nine o'clock approaches on most Sunday mornings, the sanghamembers of the Berkeley Buddhist Temple make their way toward thetemple on Charming Street. The community has been in existence heresince the Berkeley Young Men's Buddhist Association was founded in1911. Over the years and through many new buildings, the sangha hascontinued and thrived despite relocation during the Pacific War and themore recent times without a resident minister. And today, the communityis still strong and vibrant, maintaining close ties to the nearby Instituteof Buddhist Studies and hosting several annual events such as theSatsuki Bazaar a popular event for Buddhist and non-Buddhist Berkeleyresidents alike. For Sunday morning Dharma Family services, the sanghamembers—mothers and fathers, children, elderly members, Japanese andnon-Japanese—come to temple and settle into their seats and face themain altar. By 9:30 the ringing of the bell has begun, silencing the gentleand subtle piano notes that had been playing. As the bell fades out, thenew resident minister, Rev. David Matsumoto, enters the hondo, places hishands together in gasshö, bows to the statue of Amida, and takes his seat.At this point, a temple member rises and makes some openingremarks to the congregation. The service opens with the recitation of asütra passage such as the San Butsu Ge or the Jüseige or perhaps the Jünirai.Rev. Matsumoto's deep voice is joined slowly by the rest of the sangha andcollectively their voices fill the simply adorned hondo. There will be anopportunity for the sangha to take refuge in the Three Jewels. And at theend of the Dharma Family service, Rev. Matsumoto will give a DharmaTalk (sometimes an additional talk for the children before they attendSunday Dharma School). His talks are conversational in tone, open, frank,127

128 Scott A. Mitchelland filled with the reverence and humility one comes to expect from aJödo Shinshü teacher. The Dharma Talk is generally followed with a finalgasshö and the opportunity for the sangha to come forward and offer öshökoat the altar.At least once, and very often twice, during this service, the sanghawill rise and sing a gäthä in English accompanied by Western-style pianomusic. The gäthäs are highly reminiscent, to the untrained observer, ofProtestant hymns and stand in stark contrast to the Japanese chanting thatcomes before, sung in a low and deep monotone. However, the Englishlanguagegäthäs are not quite like Protestant hymns; they are not generallyas loud or as flamboyant as the hymns one might find at a gospel church forexample. And the imagery has been thoroughly un-Protestanized. 1 WhenI first encountered this practice within Buddhist Churches of America(BCA) temples, I must admit that I assumed these gäthäs to be the workof Japanese-American Buddhists attempting to acculturate themselves tomainstream Christian culture on the American continent. And yet, thereseemed to be a desire among temple members to retain some of their "Japanese-ness";half the service is done in Japanese, for example, and whilethe hondo in some sense resembles a Protestant or Christian church, thesimple adornments and lack of showy and devotional art attest to a moretraditional Japanese artistic sensibility.With my curiosity about where these gäthäs came from and how theyfound their way into American Jödo Shinshü practice sufficiently piqued,I began work on this project. What I found, however, was somewhatunexpected. Rather than a simple linear progression of Japanese toAmerican to Protestanized Japanese Buddhism, the story behind Englishlanguagegäthäs was far more complex with lines of cultural influenceacross the Pacific in both directions. Further, the players in this processwere not simply Japanese-American or European-Americans but diversecommunities in conversation with themselves and other, non-ShinshüBuddhist groups. And lastly, I could not ignore the great influence not onlyof such notable Shinshü ministers as Shinkaku Hunt or Kanmo Imamurabut also of their wives and lay members of Shinshü communities.The purpose of the present study then is to start unraveling thishistory, to briefly document the creation of the Shin Buddhist Service Bookcurrently in use in BCA temples. By placing the Service Book within notonly its historical context but also within the liturgical or ritual context

Sunday Morning Songs 129of American Shin communities, we will see how the history of ShinBuddhism in America is not the simple straight line from Kyoto to Hawai'ito San Francisco to the camps and down to the present day. Rather, it isa complex history of back and forth dialogue, cultural adaptations onboth sides of the Pacific, and constant re-evaluation by sangha membersand temple leaders alike. My focus on these gäthäs will be from the dualperspectives of history and ritual studies. I will first briefly outline thehistorical development of the Shin Buddhist Service Book, paying particularattention to the gäthäs that make up the majority of its content. SecondlyI will place these gäthäs into their ritual context and discuss some of theramifications of my findings and point to some areas of future study.Of course, the words "practice" and "ritual" are ill-favored in Shindiscourse. The standard line in Shinshü orthodoxy is that to be a Shin Buddhist,one relies on the "other power" of Amida Buddha for awakening.Any practice one engages in to further his or her spiritual development isseen as jiriki, self-power, and fruitless. Nevertheless, however much ShinBuddhists aren't supposed to be doing anything to attain awakening, thisdoes not change the fact that Shin Buddhists are indeed doing something asShin Buddhists. The question of whether or not these practices are jirikiand whether or not they have any effect on one's ability to attain shinjinis a question I will leave for ministers and religious teachers and personsfar closer to that goal than I. The question for this study is not a religiousone. Rather, the question is what these practices can tell us about thereligious life of sangha members and how they understand themselves as"Buddhists." These practices and rituals are an integral part of temple life.They provide meaning and structure to the lives of Shin Buddhists livingin America (and elsewhere, one would expect) and are therefore worthyof study.Furthermore, questions of religious practice and ritual can helpdeepen our understanding of the allusive creature known as "AmericanBuddhism." The academic study of Buddhism in the West has gaineda notable following in the past decade or two and as yet there is littleconsensus on what, exactly, it means to be an "American Buddhist." Whilequestions tend to revolve around issues of ethnicity and identity, adaptationand acculturation, little is written about Buddhist practice or ritual perse, apart from the many volumes written on meditation. What has beenwritten about meditation, however, tends to remain purely descriptive

230 Scott A. Mitchellor instructional. Little has been done to see meditation as one form ofBuddhist practice or ritual among many performed on American shores.An investigation into Buddhist music will no doubt raise new questionsfor this emerging field and call into question many of the assumptionsscholars have heretofore taken for granted.The History of the Shin Buddhist Service BookThe current Shin Buddhist Service Book is a large, purple volume ofabout three hundred pages with a golden wisteria crest on its cover. Itwas completed in 1994 by the Department of Education of the BuddhistChurches of America and is the culmination of a project begun in 1989 byan ad-hoc Music Committee in order to renew interest in Buddhist music,make recordings of Shin Buddhist songs, and create a new service bookfor use in American temples. The result is a book that not only includesEnglish-language gäthäs but the major sütras and a selection of Shinran'swasan to be chanted in Japanese, complete with Romanized readings andchanting instructions. The Service Book also has details of services for bothin the temple and at the family altar or butsudan and proper Buddhistetiquette for temple ceremonies and services. In this way, the book ismore than merely a hymnal with decontextualized songs to be sung bythe sangha-, it also serves as an instructional manual for Shin Buddhistfollowers. That the Service Book contains material on how "to be a ShinBuddhist" has led Keiko Wells to speculate that beyond being merelya hymnal, the book represents a community which is attempting to relearnits own tradition. 2 And while this is no doubt a deft and interestingobservation, I am here more concerned with the English-language gäthästhemselves and how they are utilized during temple services.There are a total of forty-seven gäthäs at the end of the Service Book, notincluding songs for special services and occasions. Of these, twenty-eightare in English, nineteen in Japanese. This simple division of language,however, is a bit deceptive. After all, several of the English gäthäs are infact translations of Japanese texts such as Shinran's "Dedication." Themusical accompaniment, moreover, was very often written separately, inmost cases for the composition of the Service Book itself. It would be easyto view these gäthäs as part of the process of cultural adaptation, to believethat as Japanese immigrants' children tended to need more "Western" or

Sunday Morning Songs 131"American" modes of practice, Shin Buddhist temples took on the lookand feel and ritual practices of mainstream Protestant American culture.However, a closer look at the development of English-language gäthäsreveals a much more complex history.The Meiji Period for Japan was a time of rapid modernization and theWesternization of Japanese culture. And the Honpa Hongwanji was, ofcourse, not immune to its influences. By 1877, for example, the institutionhad already adopted Western-style educational institutions as well as aSunday School for young Buddhists at its member temples. And for ourpresent purposes, it is important to note that in 1872, Hongwanji had senta delegation of ministers to Europe to learn all they could about Westernmodes of music. This desire for non-Japanese music lead to the creation ofthe first service books for both ministers and lay-persons in the late 19thand early 20th century. The Shinshü Seiten (Ä^Sft) for example, firstpublished in 1912, included twenty-six songs set to Western-style music.Of course, by this time Japanese immigration to Hawai'i and the NorthAmerican continent was in full swing and English-language gäthäs werebeing written on both sides of the Pacific. The Raison ( ζ> V * £ kl), for example,was printed in Honolulu in 1917 and reprinted in Japan in 1926. 3It was in 1924 that the highly influential Vade Mecum was published inHawai'i. This work, containing over a hundred hymns, was composed byErnest (Shinkaku) and Dorothy Hunt, two European-American convertsto a growing Shinshü community on the islands. One of the Hunts' intentionsin writing this book was to create a bridge among various Buddhistsschools, an intention made explicitly clear in the following statement:It is the feverent desire of the authors of this little volume thatthe heresy of separateness now prevailing among Buddhistsof Honolulu may soon be abolished. They have endeavouredtherefore to keep to the fundamental and ethical teaching hopingthat all English-speaking Buddhists, whatever their affiliation,may be able to use it. 4This statement suggests, among other things, the Hunts' understandingof Buddhism as a universal religion which should not be divided intosectarian schools. This, combined with the largely Christian imagery oftheir hymns, is highly reminiscent of another turn-of-the-century white

132 Scott Α. MitchellBuddhist convert named Paul Carus. Cams, an American philosopherbest known for his publication of the journals Open Court and The Monist,was deeply interested in spreading Buddhist teachings, albeit his versionof Buddhism as an antidote to the perceived failings of the Christianityof his day. However critical we may be of his brand of Buddhism, it isnevertheless important to keep in mind that Carus' work was influentialnot only in America but in Meiji Japan where his The Gospel of Buddha hadbeen translated in 1895. 5 In short, Carus' Buddhism (and to a certain extentthe Buddhism as expressed in the Hunts' hymns) is one which is highlyreminiscent of an abstract monistic Christianity wherein the Buddha is seenin an almost one-to-one comparison to Jesus Christ and Buddha-nature orenlightenment seen as a universal principle akin to God. These ideas wereto find their way back to Japan and just as Carus had his work translatedinto Japanese, the Hongwanji, in 1939, published the Standard BuddhistGathas and Services: Japanese and English which included fifty-sevenEnglishgäthäs, fifty-oneof which were from the Hunts' Vade Mecum.Despite the sometimes subtle, sometimes overt Christian imagery ofthe Vade Mecum, the work was still highly influential in Shin communitiesthroughout the first half of the 20th century. Between the 1920's, when theVade Mecum was in wide circulation both in Hawai'i and the mainland, and1989, several other service books were released by the Buddhist Churchesof America. Among them were the Young Buddhist Companion of 1948 andthe Buddhist Service Book of 1963, both of which inherited several hymnsfrom the Vade Mecum. The Young Buddhist Companion was an Americanversion of the earlier Japanese Standard Buddhist Gathas and Services andboth of these works have survived in some form to the present day. 6 Manyof the hymns, of course, have found their way into the current servicebook and one can see that some of the Hunts' works survive along withthe still-popular "In Lumbini's Garden" by Carus himself.Work on the current Service Book began in 1989 with the distribution ofa questionnaire among BCA members which provided invaluable feedbackon hymns and gäthäs in use at this time. In general, members found theimagery of the hymns "too Christian" and as a result, the committee setitself to the task of writing and composing new gäthäs. 7 The committeewas aided greatly by Jane Imamura who, along with Yumi Hojo andKimi Hisatsune, had already composed several English-language gäthäsfor children which were widely used in American Sunday Schools. These

Sunday Morning Songs 133gäthäs were very influential in the creation of the new Service Book for, incontrast to the hymns of the Vade Mecum, the imagery and feeling of thesongs were decidedly more "Buddhist." In addition to the input of JaneImamura, the Music Committee was aided by Linda Castro, a European-American convert to Shin Buddhism and wife of Rev. Donald Castro.From the half dozen original gäthäs Castro wrote, "Ganjin's Journey" wasincluded and expresses the unique experience of one coming to Shinshüfresh and for the first time.The gäthäs in the current Service Book, then, are a mix of traditionalJapanese songs, Shinran's wasan, hymns composed by Shinkaku Hunt aswell as Paul Carus, and more contemporary songs written by JapaneseandEuropean-Americans alike. While the book is clearly intended for aShin audience, it is also as diverse in flavor and sentiment as the AmericanShinshü community it serves. It is not simply an "Americanized" versionof a Japanese tradition, nor is it an attempt to retain a purely Japanesecharacter and serve only the Japanese community. Rather, it draws on thefull heritage of the Shinshü experience in America and Japan.What we can see from this brief historical sketch of the Shin BuddhistService Book is that the process of "Westernization" was not simply fromEast to West. Rather, there was significant interplay between, on the onehand, Japanese Buddhists' desire to have Western-style music for servicesin Japan and, on the other, American Buddhists' desire to create servicesthat would attend to the needs of their congregations. The notion thatEnglish language gäthäs were solely the product of American Buddhists,solely in response to a perceived need for more "American" or "Western"style services or to cater to English-speaking nisei or sansei Buddhists,may turn out to be far too simplistic a hypothesis to explain the complexways in which these gäthäs were written. The process of acculturation orAmericanization needs to be closely examined and questioned in futureresearch.Furthermore, what this brief historical sketch demonstrates is theusual way in which scholars have approached Buddhist music—thatis, from a textual or historical perspective. What little research has beendone in English tends to focus on the texts themselves. And while thehistory of these hymns and gäthäs and their implied or actual meaningsand embedded philosophy is relevant and needs to be more fully studied,what is lacking in the current research is how these gäthäs are perceived

134 Scott A. Mitchellwithin the tradition. That is, how are they understood by actual, living,practicing Buddhists? How are they incorporated within the larger ritualcontext? Are their messages and meanings elaborated upon by ministers?How do practicing Buddhists feel about the hymns and do they enrichtheir lives? And if so, in what way?Implications for Future ResearchThe history of Buddhist songs in the Americas has numerousimplications not only on the study of Shinshü in the West and Japanbut more broadly on Buddhist studies as a discipline. While my initialintention in this paper was to focus not only on the history of these gäthäsbut also on their use within American sanghas, I quickly realized that Iwould have neither the time nor the resources to do the in-depth study thatthis topic deserves. While these gathas are, in and of themselves, extremelyinteresting and deserving of further, sustained research, I cannot removethem from their larger historical, social, and ritual contexts. In the end,I've found myself merely speculating on the implications their story mayhave for future scholarship. It is to this speculation that I wish to turn forthe remainder of my talk.Apart from sectarian writing and the work done within the IASBS,the study of Shin Buddhism within Western academia has been slow tocatch on in the way that sustained research into Zen or Tibetan Buddhismhas. While there are no doubt a number of reasons for this (one obviousone being the lack of charismatic or "famous" Buddhists within the Shintradition, for better or worse), this lack of sustained interest has, I feel,limited scholars' views of what Buddhism has to offer, its larger history,and the implications of this history. The standard model of Buddhistdissemination from East to West is almost always a linear one: Buddhismcame from India, moved east to China, was carried to Japan, and thenleapt across the Pacific to the Americas where it is now trying to adaptitself to a new cultural milieu.What we can learn from Shinshü hymns, however, paints a more complicatedstory. To begin, even before Buddhism was well established inHawai'i, there was already an interest within Buddhist communities toalter the way Shinshü was being practiced in Japan. This can be seen inthe adoption of Sunday Schools and the importing of Western-style music

Sunday Morning Songs 135by the Hongwanji during the Meiji period. There is a tendency among acertain breed of scholar to label this as a "Western influence" on the East.But the tendency in Orientalist-flavored scholarship to call any Westerninfluence merely the work of Western imperialism is a bit troublesome.The implication that Asia is the ever-passive recipient of Western culture,the victim of outside forces, removes from Asia any free-will of her own orthe ability of Asia to influence the West. The truth of the matter, of course,is that there was a conscious desire among the Japanese to learn about theWest during the Meiji reforms. And what's more, Japanese culture at thetime was spreading to and influencing the West in turn. 8On the other side of the Pacific, Shin Buddhists were bringing theircultural traditions with them from Japan and mingling them with thedominant cultures of the Americas. The Vade Mecum is an excellent casestudy in how white Westerners were active in the creation of a uniquelyAmerican (pan-Buddhist) Shin Buddhism which was then in turninfluenced by Japanese-Americans. And while there is an assumptionamong some scholars that Japanese Americans became more "American"as the result of a desire to "fit in" out of fear of racial repression before andduring the Pacific War, tlie history of English-language gäthäs and servicesdoes not always bear this out. And during the post-war period there isevidence in the creation of service books that the community wanted toretain both its English-language heritage and its Japanese-ness.This messy and non-linear story, then, is just that: messy. It is not theeasy historical narrative that the old Orientalist scholarship was so fondof painting. In its place, though, we have a more colorful history that canreveal the real historical motivators who have helped shape the courseof Shin Buddhism in Japan as well as the West. Rather than focusing ourattention on charismatic leaders who seem to capture the limelight, wecan take note of the lesser-known characters, particularly women, who tothis day have direct and important influence on the day-to-day religiouslives of countless Shin Buddhists.Beyond the study of Shin Buddhism, this complex, messy historymay have broader implications for the study of Buddhism in the Westat large. As I mentioned earlier, the study of Buddhism in the West isdominated by studies of Zen and Tibetan Buddhism on the one hand andconvert Buddhists on the other. While these traditions and populationsare no doubt important, worthy subjects of study for the overall picture

236 Scott A. Mitchellof Buddhism in America, they are not the only things happening. While amore sustained discussion of Shin Buddhism in America would no doubtshed valuable light on the history of Buddhism in America generally, someof the questions I have raised in this paper could be useful for scholars ofthese other traditions as well. For example, to what extent was AmericanZen influenced not only by Japanese Americans but also by converts to thetradition? And, in turn, did this convert community influence the traditionin Japan? Further, by looking at liturgical or ritual practices such as thosecontained in the service books of other traditions, where they came from,and who wrote them, we can gain a deeper appreciation for the religiouslife and vitality of any Buddhist school. And by exploring this history canwe uncover other, lesser known but by no means less important historicalfigures who have avoided the scholar's gaze.Finally, I would like to return to questions of "practice" and "ritual."It is important to remember that the gäthäs of the Service Book are part of alarger ritual context. While "practice" and "ritual" are oft-derided wordsin Shin doctrine, it is clear that these "folk songs" 9 serve as a vital part ofthe practical and religious life of sangha members in BCA and Canadiantemples. It would seem obvious then that both Shinshü scholars andministers would have a vested interest in learning about the history ofthe gäthäs, their place within the tradition, and, most importantly, howtheir temple members receive them: do they relate to the songs? whatfeelings are associated with them? do they understand their relationshipto Shin practice or teaching or history? and so on. This is perhaps themost important area for further research: first for the academic reason ofshedding light on the history of the Shin tradition in the West, and secondfor the practical implications on the Shin communities who bring thesesongs to life every Sunday morning.

Sunday Morning Songs 137NOTES1. Keiko Wells does an excellent job of discussing both the history and theimagery and meaning of English language gäthäs in her articles "Shin BuddhistSong Lyrics Sung in the United States: Their History and ExpressedBuddhist Images (1), 1898-1939; (2), 1936-2001," Tokyo daigaku Amerikataiheiyö kenkyü 2 (2003): pp. 75-99; 3 (2002): pp. 41-64. For a useful discussionof the differences between Japanese and Western style music, see DavidJ. Goa and Harold G. Coward, "Sacred Ritual, Sacred Language: JödoShinshü Religious Forms in Transition," Studies in Religion 12- 4 (1983):pp. 363-79.2. Wells, "Shin Buddhist Song Lyrics Sung in the United States (2)," p. 52.3. For a more detailed historical sketch of these early Shin hymnals, seeWells, "Shin Buddhist Song Lyrics Sung in the United States (1)."4. As quoted in George J. Tanabe, "Glorious Gathas: Americanization andJapanization in Honganji Hymns," in Engaged Pure Land Buddhism: TheChallenges Facing Jödo Shinshü in the Contemporary World, Essays in Honorof Professor Alfred Bloom, edited by Kenneth K. Tanaka and Eisho Nasu(Berkeley: Wisdom Ocean Publication, 1998), p. 223.5. For more on Paul Carus and his reception in Japan, see Judith Snodgrass,"Buddha no fukuin: The Deployment of Paul Carus' Gospel of Buddha inMeiji Japan," Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 25/3-4 (1998): pp. 319-344.6. Tanabe, "Glorious Gathas," p. 225.7. Wells, "Shin Buddhist Song Lyrics Sung in the United States (1)," pps.95ff; "Shin Buddhist Song Lyrics Sung in the United States (2)," pps. 52ff.8. For a more sustained conversation about globalized Buddhism, seeJudith Snodgrass, Presenting Japanese Buddhism to the West: Orientalism,Occidentalism, and the Colombian Exposition (Chapel Hill, North Carolina:University of North Carolina Press, 2003).9. Wells, "Shin Buddhist Song Lyrics Sung in the United States (1)," p. 75.

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